US President George W. Bush has not quite five months to make good on his seven-year-old vow to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" before his successor inherits the hunt for the terrorist mastermind. But the vastly unpopular president rejects suggestions that he's making any special effort to nab the elusive Saudi-born extremist ahead of the November 4 US elections that will decide who succeeds him at the White House. "I read some of the headlines that said, 'Bush orders special hunt for Osama Bin Laden' -- a little bit of press hyperventilating: after all, that's what we've been doing since September 11," 2001, he told Sky television in June. Bush made his dramatic "dead or alive" promise six days after bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network carried out history's worst terrorist strikes, leading the US president to declare a global war on terrorism. Asked at the Pentagon whether he wanted the Saudi-born author of history's worst terrorist attacks dead, Bush replied: "I want justice. There's an old poster out West as I recall that said, 'Wanted: Dead or alive.'" Six months later, his focus already shifting to the war in Iraq, Bush told reporters in March 2002 that the war on terrorism was bigger than bin Laden and declared: "I truly am not that concerned about him. "Six year after the September 11 attacks sent the US president's popularity soaring to record highs as the US public rallied behind its wartime leader, they languish at record lows, with bin Laden still on the run. And Bush now lists "dead or alive" with other colorful but "unfortunate" phrases he regrets uttering -- and US First Lady Laura Bush has publicly criticized the invocation of the rough justice of the US Wild West."It didn't sound serious, really," she said in News television in June. "It makes it look like I like war. And I don't," the president agreed in the same interview.